The humble lithium-ion battery has become an extremely familiar fixture in our daily lives. Essentially all our portable devices are powered by them – smartphones, tablets, smartwatches – however we’ve pretty much reached the technological limit of what they are capable of within the laws of physics. Luckily, some clever fellows have been working on producing lithium-sulfur batteries which theoretically can have 5-8 times more capacity than lithium-ion batteries and their work has recently been featured in the scientific publication, Nano Letters.
The work centres around replacing the metal oxide in batteries with the much lighter sulfur, which would enable bigger battery capacities. In fact, in a recent test, the scientists involved (Xingcheng Xiao, Weidong Zhou, Mei Cai, et al) were able to produce stable lithium-sulfur batteries with 630mAh per gram, as opposed to lithium-ion which is only able to achieve 200mAh per gram, and lasted over 600 cycles of charging. This study is notable as the scientists were able to overcome lithium-sulfur’s tendency to escape, which would otherwise manifest as losing charge quickly. We’re certainly living in a world of technological enlightenment with this and many other studies going on to improve the performance of our devices – we can’t wait to see the results.
What do you think about the work being done on lithium-sulfur batteries?
Source: American Chemical Society via Overclockers Club
